Medical research is at a crossroads. The major
killer diseases are not solved by old experimental techniques. In order to
win against the major diseases, researchers are looking to new
technologies, and doctors are forced to learn new approaches.

Heart Disease: The
Number One Killer

The greatest advance in the understanding of heart
disease was the discovery that it can be virtually eliminated by
controlling three factors—cholesterol, smoking, and blood pressure. This
extraordinary advance came from sophisticated studies of human patients.

Over the past four decades, in Framingham,
Massachusetts, thousands of individuals in two generations have been
carefully studied to see which factors are responsible for heart disease.
The Framingham Heart Study showed that if one’s cholesterol level stays
below 150, a heart attack is extremely unlikely. Every 1 percent increase
in cholesterol leads to approximately a 2 percent increase in risk. Other
studies, such as the Lipid Research Clinic’s Trial and the Multiple Risk
Factor Intervention Trial, have also demonstrated the importance of
controlling cholesterol levels.

Dean Ornish, M.D., of the University of California
at San Francisco, has shown that if people who have advanced heart disease
adopt a low-fat vegetarian diet, stop smoking, reduce stress, and engage
in mild daily exercise, the plaques in their arteries will actually start
to disappear.

Coronary artery bypasses and heart transplants,
while helpful for some patients, have not matched the potency of dietary
and other lifestyle measures. Bypasses and transplants develop aggressive
atherosclerosis unless strict dietary steps are taken. Clearly, medicine’s
best strategy is to institute such steps while the patient is still
healthy.

More research is needed: what we need are human
behavioral studies on how to help people change long-standing smoking and
dietary habits. Economic and political studies on how to shift farm
production away from tobacco and livestock and toward grains, legumes,
vegetables, and fruits are also essential.

Cancer: The Number
Two Killer

In 1971, President Nixon declared the new,
aggressive “War on Cancer.” In spite of these efforts, cancer death rates
continue to climb.

A standard technique in the search for new
anticancer drugs has been to give test substances to laboratory mice with
leukemia. This is a slow and expensive procedure. It has yielded few
effective agents while consuming millions of dollars and no fewer than one
million animals each year.

A new method developed by Michael Boyd, Robert
Shoemaker, and others at the National Cancer Institute tests potential
drugs on actual human tumor cells.1 In an automated system, the
effectiveness of a substance in killing cancer cells is checked and
entered into a computer. Potential drugs which have been overlooked by the
mouse screening system may be found to work in the new human cell screen.

Instead of struggling—and often failing—to cure
established cancer, a large body of data now shows that cancer can be
prevented. The National Cancer Institute estimates that as much as 80
percent of cancer cases can be prevented.

Thirty percent of cancers are due to tobacco. Avoid
smoking, and lung cancer becomes very unlikely. At least 35 percent of
cancers are due to dietary factors.

In 1982, the National Research Council released a
technical report, Diet, Nutrition, and Cancer,2 showing that
diet was probably the greatest single factor in the epidemic of cancer.
Since then, more evidence has implicated specific dietary factors in
several types of cancer. Foods rich in fats and oils increase risk of
cancer in organs related to digestion (e.g., colon, rectum) and organs
that are sensitive to sex hormones (e.g., breast, prostate).3

In addition, certain food constituents help protect
against cancer. Dietary fiber, principally found in whole grain cereals
and legumes, helps prevent cancer of the colon and rectum. It also appears
to reduce risk of breast cancer, perhaps by lowering cholesterol and sex
hormones. Several vitamins have shown anticancer activity: beta-carotene
(the form of vitamin A found in dark green and yellow vegetables and
fruits), vitamins C and E, and the mineral selenium may help prevent
cancer.

Avoiding excessive exposure to sunlight is a
critical step in the prevention of skin cancer. In addition, radon, a
natural radioactive gas that seeps up from certain underground rocks into
groundwater supplies, has been implicated in certain cancers. Improved
ventilation stops radon from building up in enclosed areas.

Prevention is the light at the end of the tunnel for
those looking for a way to reduce the cancer epidemic. By avoiding factors
that lead to cancer and including foods that strengthen us against the
disease, we can, to a great extent, control our own risk.

ESTIMATED PERCENTAGES OF CANCER DUE
TO SELECTED FACTORS*

Diet

35-60%

Tobacco

30%

Alcohol

3%

Radiation

3%

Air and Water Pollution

1-5%

Medications

2%

* These figures are rough
estimates based on data from: Cancer Rates and Risks, National
Cancer Institute (Washington, DC: 1985), and R. Doll and R. Peto,
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1981, 66(6):1191-1308.
Other factors may also play a role in certain forms of cancer and
are not included in this table. Categories may overlap. For
example, both tobacco and alcohol contribute to esophageal cancer.

Cellular Tests for
Cancer-Causing Chemicals

While cumbersome and expensive animal tests take
years to yield a verdict on potentially dangerous chemicals, rapid
non-animal tests can give results in a matter of hours or days. The Ames
Test, the best known of these, uses bacteriologic methods that are
markedly cheaper and faster than animal tests. The test checks whether
substances can cause genetic damage in salmonella bacteria. If so, the
chemical is likely to be a carcinogen. A cancer text states:

“The progressive arrival upon the scene of the Ames
salmonella mutation test culminating in the (so far) definitive version in
1975 undoubtedly signaled a change in the way in which the field of
carcinogenesis had to be viewed. It reflected almost a quantum jump in our
progress towards understanding of this difficult area.”4

Stroke: The Number
Three Killer

In stroke, a part of the brain is killed, leading to
paralysis, loss of sensory function, and often death. Clinical and
epidemiologic studies have shown how stroke is caused and how it can be
prevented. It has become clear that the same factors that lead to heart
disease—high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, and smoking—can
also cause stroke. Controlling these factors can prevent stroke. To reduce
the incidence of stroke, more aggressive measures to help people change
dietary and smoking behavior must be developed.

The Meat Free Zone (MFZ) campaign is intended to make the MeatFreeZone logo as
recognizable a symbol as the "Smoke Free Zone". The idea was originally
conceived when The WARM Store in Woodstock, NY, was in operation throughout the
'90's (Woodstock Animal Rights Movement). The store was truly a meat free zone
as it was the first cruelty-free, Vegan, socially conscious animal rights store
in the United States. Now that the Vegan and Vegetarian movements have been
growing so rapidly, more and more people are showing concern about the food in
their diet and their overall health and nutrition. Many people are giving up
eating fish, chicken, beef, pork (pigs ), dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt,
ice cream) and eggs. Headlines of Mad Cow disease, E-coli
and salmonella are in the news with greater frequency. Vegan and vegetarian
recipe cookbooks are standard now in all bookstores and many restaurants have
added Vegan and Vegetarian options to their menus. We hope you will help us with
the Meat Free Zone campaign by putting the signs up in your homes and workplaces
and by spreading them to all the vegetarian and vegan restaurants that you know
and frequent. And someday we will have true "meat free zones" in establishments
that serve meat.
(d-2)